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MUSIC REVIEW; Fierce Intensity Meets Its Foil

The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation runs a prestigious international violin competition that has been around for decades, with an impressive list of winners who include Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Elmar Oliveira and Joseph Silverstein.

For the 2003 violin competition, the Naumburg jury maintained its high standards, awarding first place to Frank Huang, who performed a dazzling recital in January, and second place to Ayano Ninomiya, who gave gripping readings of Bartok and Schumann on Tuesday in Weill Recital Hall.

A tricky issue of perception arises with these winners. Both were students of the violinist Robert Mann, a longtime supporter of the competition and the president of the Naumburg Foundation since 1971. Mr. Mann is not a judge for the violin prizes, but it is still an awkward coincidence that of the countless violin teachers across the globe, it was Mr. Mann whose students won the top two awards in 2003.

Still, both are deserving of recognition and just how deserving Ms. Ninomiya was became clear in the second work on Tuesday's program, Bartok's brutal (and brutally difficult) Solo Sonata. It demands that a player navigate extremely thick and thorny chordal writing to convey the gnarled and often wrenching lyricism at the music's core. Ms. Ninomiya lit into the opening measures, digging deeply into the strings and producing a sense of urgency.

She sustained this intensity as well as her lapidary phrasing throughout this half-hour work. The impression was not just one of a routinely good performance. Rather, her technique --and more important her disposition -- found their ideal foil in Bartok's smoldering music.

Unfortunately, if perhaps inevitably, not every work offered such a perfect fit. Ms. Ninomiya opened with Schubert's ''Rondo Brilliante,'' virtuoso music that is by turns serious but also playful. She was impressive, but her intensity (already at Bartok levels) seemed less organically suited to music that must be allowed to breathe and even swagger.

Ms. Ninomiya seemed more up to this task with the short and funky movement ''40 Percent Swing'' from John Adams's ''Road Movies.'' The final selection, Schumann's fevered, stormy Sonata No. 3, brought her back to her interpretive strong suit, and the performance was deeply communicative and engrossing. Benjamin Loeb was the capable accompanist.